Banned from sporting activity during the war because of her Jewish origins, Hungarian gymnast Agnes Keleti, who died Thursday at the age of 103, trained in secret. Before winning ten Olympic medals at the age of 30.
“It was worth doing something good in life considering the attention I received. I get chills when I see all the articles written about me,” she whispered to AFP on the occasion of her hundredth birthday.
She, who was the oldest Olympic champion in the world, would celebrate her 104th birthday in a week, driven to the end by “incredible energy”, according to her son Rafael Biro-Keleti.
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Keleti will have had a life worthy of a film script. She was born on January 9, 1921 in Budapest under the name Agnes Klein, then took a Hungarian-sounding surname.
Called up to the national team in 1939, the queen of floor routines was quickly excluded because of her Jewish origins.
Kicked out of her gymnastics team in 1941 because of her Jewish ancestry, Keleti hid in the Hungarian countryside where she survived the Holocaust by assuming a false identity and working as a cleaner.
Agnes Keleti performing a split at her home in Herzliya, Israel, August 13, 2012. (Oded Balilty/AP)
After the occupation of Hungary by the Third Reich in March 1944, she escaped deportation by obtaining false documents and assuming the identity of a young Christian, in exchange for all her property.
A refugee in the countryside, she works as a servant while secretly training on the banks of the Danube in her free time.
His father and several members of his family were deported and exterminated in Auschwitz, while his mother and sister were saved thanks to the Swedish diplomat Raoul Wallenberg.
“See the world”
Agnes Keleti holding a photo of herself on the balance beam during a competition at her home in Herzliya in August 2012. (Oded Balilty/AP)
After the war, she returned to competition, but had a false start in London in 1948: an injury due to her efforts and the Olympic Games again eluded her.
He had to wait a few more years to win ten Olympic medals, including five gold at the Olympic Games in Helsinki (1952) and Melbourne (1956), all after the age of 30.
Like many Hungarian athletes, Keleti did not return home after the Australian events, which took place a few weeks after the failure of the anti-Soviet uprising in Hungary.
“I did sport not because it made me feel good but to see the world,” she said in 2016.
Retired Hungarian-Israeli artistic gymnast and coach Agnes Keleti, in her apartment in Budapest, Hungary, January 8, 2023. (Attila Kisbenedek/AFP)
She then moved to Israel where in 1959 she married a Hungarian sports teacher, Robert Biro, with whom she had two children.
After retiring from sports, Keleti worked as a physical education teacher and coached the Israeli national team.
It was only in 1983, for the World Gymnastics Championships, that she returned for the first time to Hungary, then still communist. She will definitely return in 2015.
Keleti was awarded the prestigious Israel Prize in 2017 – considered the country’s highest cultural honor – and has received numerous other prestigious awards, including being named Hungary’s “Athlete of the Nation” in 2004.
Retired Hungarian-Israeli artistic gymnast and world champion Agnes Keleti, at her home in Budapest, November 6, 2020. (Credit: Attila Kisbenedek/AFP)
On the occasion of the Olympic and Paralympic Games in Paris, France wished to “pay tribute to his eminent merits” and awarded him the gold medal for youth, sports and community involvement in September.
“Thank you for everything!” », Wrote Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban on Facebook, paying tribute to the champion.
According to the country’s leading sports daily, National Sportit is the Frenchman Charles Coste, gold medalist in the team pursuit in track cycling at the London Games in 1948, who succeeds Keleti as the oldest Olympic champion. Centenarian, born February 8, 1924, he carried the flame during the opening ceremony of the Paris Games.
